Backbiter

A welcome is in order - a welcome to a world of whispers and revelations and perhaps, on occasion, a little wanton mudslinging. This column is designed to give you the inside track on happenings in the IT industry.

That, at least, was the essence of the Editor's brief. Alas for he, I have no truck with briefs: I prefer to hang free. And who am I, this insolent author of wrath-in-waiting? Why, those who know me well - a tally that extends only to the PCW editor - call me Backbiter.

I have imbibed and observed as this industry has grown from a world ruled by a nerdy hegemony to one that is now controlled by an unthinkably wealthy nerdy hegemony. And I'm tired of it, I tell you. Sick to the teeth, in fact. So I'm going to do something about it. Whine, moan, and dish the dirt primarily.

So, where do I begin? The industry's best-known name seems like a good place. Through a haze of beryl-blue smoke, news filtered through to me of Microsoft's plans to rein in nefarious characters wreaking havoc on the web.

According to Microsoft's senior vice president and general counsel, Brad Smith, the company's new Anti-virus Reward Programme will help law-enforcement agencies bring to justice those responsible for giving birth to damaging worms which run amok in the world's computer systems. With that in mind, I can only hope that Bill Gates has secured immunity from prosecution for his surviving parent.

While my gaze is fixed on Microsoft - and let's face it, the firm's activities are sure to provide regular meat and drink to this column - I see the firm has issued a critical fix for one of its highest-profile new releases.

In what must be some kind of record, just two weeks after the worldwide release of Office 2003, Microsoft was forced to admit to a major flaw in its flagship software suite. According to the company's confession, unfortunate owners of the new Office have found themselves confronted by worrying error messages.

Pardon the pun, as I declare hold the front page - Microsoft Applications In Error Message Display Shocker! OK, so sarcasm isn't witty, but context makes a cheap snipe hard to resist. In the past year, Microsoft's automated updates service has prompted Backbiter's Windows XP-based PC to install over 60 software fixes; seven of them critical.

Talking of fixes, I'm happy to remind you that the Public Record Office (PRO) has restored the 1901 Census website, the genealogical goldmine that spent much of 2002 offline.

This much is not news, but a year-long investigation into the dotcom debacle, instigated by the National Audit Office (NAO), has just concluded that you were to blame. Oh, and so was I (or rather, my kind).

You see, the NAO has faulted the UK media for being foolish enough to inform you, the public, of the site's existence. For your part, each hour up to 1.2 million of you meddling kids were attempting to look up your ancestors' details online by connecting to the 1901 Census data.

There's no doubt in this guttersnipe's mind that those responsible within the PRO deemed this level of demand 'unprecedented'. But could it not be the same level of 'unprecedented demand' that sees the BBC News Online website grind to a halt every time a big story breaks?

Indeed, is it not the same unprecedented demand that has resulted in the failure to cope of almost every other high-profile internet launch since the dawn of the web? Backbiter wishes someone other than himself would pick up on this unprecedented level of precedents.

Offline, Backbiter has heard rumour that Microsoft is to unveil details of X-Box 2 at San Jose's Game Developers Conference in March. This comes hot on the heels of IBM's victory over Intel in the battle to become the processor supplier to the next-generation X-Box.

That this news was barely registered by the mainstream press comes as no great surprise. An old maxim had it that no-one ever got fired for buying Big Blue, but these days few people get fired up by those who do.

And all of a sudden, it's the end. Not only for this first column but also for a large chunk of cable company NTL's workforce, 2,000 having just been given their marching orders.

At the same time, the company embarked on a 'comprehensive review' of its brought-in-from-the-cold customer complaints site, nthellworld.com. And the first step? To shut down the site with immediate effect, leaving patrons of NTL with nowhere to vent their spleen - at least in the hopeful heads of NTL's management.

Sadly for these bigwigs, when the company brought the nthellworld.com site in-house, it neglected to bag the local variant of the domain name - www.nthellworld.co.uk. See you there.

If you have any moans, groans or scurrilous gossip that you think might interest backbiter, you can email him at backbiter@pcw.co.uk.

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